Sooner or later a paper logbook fills up, an app looks tempting, or a move between authorities forces the question: how do you carry your flying history into a new format without the numbers, or their credibility, leaking away? The reassuring answer is that a logbook is not the book. It is the reliable record of experience the book happens to hold, and that record can move between covers, and between paper and screen, as long as it arrives intact and stays defensible.
This is general educational information, not operational, legal, or regulatory advice. Rules differ by authority and change over time. Always verify against current official sources and follow your operator's approved procedures.
The record, not the paper
Start from what a logbook is for. It is the evidence you show to issue or revalidate a licence or rating, to prove recency, and to complete a flight review or proficiency check, the same purpose covered in our guide to keeping a digital logbook. None of that is tied to a particular binding. What matters is that the totals are right, each entry is traceable to a real flight, and the whole thing survives inspection. Change the format and you change the container; the obligation stays exactly where it was. That is why converting from paper to digital, or copying an old book into a new one, is legitimate and routine rather than something the rules resist, provided you carry the substance across faithfully.
The international frame sits above the format question entirely. ICAO Annex 1 (Personnel Licensing) sets the minimum standards for the experience a pilot must be able to demonstrate, and leaves the detailed method of recording it to each state and its licensing authority. So the standard you must satisfy comes from your authority, not from ICAO, and the two big systems word it differently in a way that matters when you transfer.
What each system actually requires
Here the EASA and FAA wording genuinely diverge, and carrying one authority's phrase onto the other is a classic error.
Under EASA and the UK CAA, Part-FCL, FCL.050 is brief: "The pilot shall keep a reliable record of the details of all flights flown in a form and manner established by the competent authority." The detail lives in the associated Acceptable Means of Compliance, AMC1 FCL.050, which sets out what the record should contain: your personal details; and for each flight the date, the departure and arrival place and time, the aircraft type and registration, whether the aircraft is single- or multi-engine (if applicable), the total flight time, the name of the pilot-in-command, the pilot function time (PIC, co-pilot, dual, instructor), and the operational conditions such as night or IFR. For the UK, the CAA's personal logbook product is CAP 407.
Under the FAA, 14 CFR 61.51 takes a different angle. It requires you to "document and record" your training and aeronautical experience "in a manner acceptable to the Administrator", and prescribes the content of an entry, the date, total time, departure and arrival points, aircraft type and identification, the type of experience or training, and the conditions of flight, without prescribing any particular form. Note the exact standard: the FAA says "in a manner acceptable to the Administrator", not "a reliable record". The phrase "reliable record" is EASA's, and reading it as an FAA requirement is one of the small mistakes that reveals a logbook copied carelessly across systems.
The practical upshot for a transfer: whichever authority your licence sits under, the destination format has to be able to hold that authority's required fields. Move to an app that cannot record pilot function properly, and you have downgraded the record even if the totals look tidy.
Are electronic logbooks allowed?
Yes, in both systems, and it is worth being precise about the basis, because the two authorities permit it by different routes.
EASA says so openly. AMC1 FCL.050 describes the logbook format and states that it "may be kept in electronic format", provided all the same data is included. The AMC does not require you to print an electronic logbook out, but it is not silent on record-keeping either: it instructs that paper records should be made in ink or indelible pencil, and that electronic records should be kept readily available at the request of the competent authority, contain all the required items, be certified by the pilot, and be in a format acceptable to the competent authority. The AMC also requires that specific kinds of time are countersigned by the right person, student-pilot-in-command, PICUS and instruction time, so those authenticating signatures have to survive any conversion.
The FAA permits electronic logbooks by saying nothing that forbids them: 61.51 is format-neutral, so an electronic record kept "in a manner acceptable to the Administrator" is as valid as paper. FAA guidance backs this up, notably Advisory Circular 120-78B on electronic signatures and recordkeeping. Read the scope, though: that AC is framed around certificate holders and operators rather than issued as a blanket blessing of any private pilot's phone app, so the honest statement is that the FAA does not require paper and accepts electronic recordkeeping, not that any particular product is approved. No authority, EASA or FAA, certifies a commercial logbook app as such.
Carrying totals forward
The mechanical heart of a transfer is the brought-forward total, and the EASA format is built for it. AMC1 FCL.050's layout carries running totals as "TOTAL THIS PAGE", "TOTAL FROM PREVIOUS PAGES" and "TOTAL TIME", and asks for an accumulated total time of flight. In other words, a logbook is designed to continue a previous logbook: the opening line of a new book is the closing total of the old one. When you convert to digital, you do exactly the same thing, entering your existing accumulated totals as an opening balance and logging forward from there.
Two disciplines keep that honest. First, total the old record and confirm it before you copy, because a brought-forward figure inherits every error already in the book. Second, keep the source the totals came from. A carried-forward number is only as good as the record behind it, and if a total is ever questioned, the answer is in the pages you carried it from, not in the round number at the top of the new book.
The evidence regulators expect
Conversion does not change what your authority can ask to see. Both systems give an inspector the right to your record on request: the FAA under 61.51(i), which lets the Administrator, the NTSB or law enforcement inspect your logbook, and EASA under FCL.045, which requires a pilot to present the flight time record on request from the competent authority. And when you apply for a licence or rating, the logbook is the evidence: the UK CAA's guidance on submitting logbooks for general aviation applications asks you to send the logbook in support of the application and to include the personal-details page that shows whose logbook it is.
That is why a converted logbook has to preserve more than a column of hours. The countersignatures that authenticate SPIC, PICUS and instruction time; the identity page; the traceability from a total back to the individual flights, all of it is what turns a private tally into evidence an authority will accept. Strip those out in a hasty copy-and-paste and the numbers may be right while the proof is gone.
Lost, damaged or reconstructed logbooks
If a logbook is lost or destroyed, the burden of showing your experience is yours, and there is no single regulation that prescribes how you rebuild it. You reconstruct from independent evidence, aircraft records, training and course records, receipts, other pilots' logbooks that overlap yours, and your licensing authority decides what it will accept. Be careful with one widely repeated shortcut: the "notarised statement" method often quoted for lost time comes from FAA guidance on aircraft maintenance records, where it is used to re-establish an airframe's time in service, not from any personal-pilot-logbook rule. Citing it as a pilot-logbook procedure is a category error. The defensible line is simpler: keep good backups so you never test the question, and if you do, gather the best corroborating evidence you can and present it honestly.
A worked example
You have flown for six years on paper and want to move to a digital logbook. Your last page totals 320.4 hours, of which 260.1 PIC, 41.7 dual, 22.6 night and 18.0 instrument, with the SPIC and instruction entries from your training countersigned by your instructor.
You rule off and re-add the paper columns, and find the accumulated total is right. In the app you create an opening balance dated the day before your first new entry: 320.4 total, and the sub-totals split the same way, entered as brought-forward figures, mirroring the "TOTAL FROM PREVIOUS PAGES" line the EASA format expects. You do not retype six years of individual flights; you carry the certified totals and continue. Your first real digital entry, a 1.3-hour local flight, takes the running total to 321.7. You then reconcile the app's new grand total against the paper book's closing total; they agree to the tenth of an hour, so you trust it. You keep the paper logbook in a drawer as the primary, certified evidence the digital record was derived from, rather than discarding it now that the totals live on a screen. Months later, applying for a rating, you submit the record with its personal-details page, and the brought-forward history stands up because the source is still on the shelf.
Common pitfalls
- Copying one system's wording onto the other. "Reliable record" is EASA; "in a manner acceptable to the Administrator" is the FAA. They are different standards, so log to the authority the licence belongs to.
- Assuming an app is approved. Both authorities allow electronic logbooks, but neither certifies a particular product; the record's validity rests on its content, not its logo.
- Carrying a total without its source. A brought-forward figure inherits every error in the book behind it, so verify before you copy and keep the source.
- Dropping the authentication. Countersigned SPIC, PICUS and instruction entries, and the identity page, are what make the record evidence; a totals-only copy loses the proof.
- Trusting the maintenance-records shortcut. The notarised-statement reconstruction is an aircraft-records procedure, not a pilot-logbook rule, so do not lean on it for lost flight time.
- Binning the paper too soon. Retaining the original after digitising is sensible practice, because it is the certified source your digital totals came from.
In Pilot EFB
Pilot EFB keeps an electronic logbook you enter and confirm yourself, with an opening-balance field so you can carry your existing totals forward as a brought-forward figure and continue logging without retyping your history, and an EASA-format PDF export you can print or submit. Treat it as a convenient personal record: verify the totals you bring across, keep the original paper logbook as your primary evidence, preserve the countersignatures your training entries carry, and reconcile the whole thing with whatever your operator or training organisation treats as official. Entries you have saved stay readable offline. Pilot EFB is offline-first and is not a certified or authority-approved electronic logbook, so treat it as your personal record and present your official evidence to the authority as the rules require.